It's indeed a classic. I think one reason why there's relatively little discussion is that in the intervening years Dijkstra has been proven so correct that there's relatively little to say.
But I suspect that the main reason why it's hard for most people to talk about his work is that they lack the historical context to understand what he's talking about. For someone who has never studied or used FORTRAN, ALGOL 60, or any of the macro languages he alludes to, his criticisms seem very abstract. For someone who has seen those languages, they're concrete and visceral.
Looking back twenty years ago, I now understand that one of the highest-value courses in my CS degree was the "Survey of Programming Languages" class. We spent two to three weeks studying and working with each of LISP, FORTRAN, ALGOL-60, Smalltalk, and a couple others I don't remember. I enjoyed the class but at the time I wasn't developed enough to think more than "man, people sure have come up with some strange ways of doing things; ok, back to C, I love my filesystems class."
Now I recognize how precious that exposure was. It's kind of like traveling; exposure to different cultures teaches you as much about your own culture as about theirs. You don't always realize what assumptions you're making until you see other people making different assumptions.
This is the value of formal CS education, i.e. Dijkstra's life work. Some people ask whether a CS degree is worthwhile when the Internet makes it so easy to learn how to program. It's the difference between university and vocational training; if you only want fix cars, you just need some skills classes and time spent apprenticing in a mechanic's shop. If you want to be an automotive engineer, you need an engineering education. If you just want a job, you don't need college; if you want to participate in the core of what our civilization has to offer, you need an education (self-study or formal, doesn't matter).
(Tip for the kids in school today: If you're at university and you find yourself frequently saying "Why do I have to learn this crap? I'll never use it!" then you might just be wasting your time and money. Do yourself a favor and drop out, unless someone else is paying for your play time. But if you learn for the sake of learning, if you recognize that learning how to learn, to prepare for a lifetime of learning, is the point of education, then stay in school, since you'll reap the rewards many times over.)
It will be taught again in the fall. He covers three languages (SML, Racket, and Ruby) in ten weeks, hitting three of the four quadrants on strongly typed/dynamic and functional/object oriented.
But I suspect that the main reason why it's hard for most people to talk about his work is that they lack the historical context to understand what he's talking about. For someone who has never studied or used FORTRAN, ALGOL 60, or any of the macro languages he alludes to, his criticisms seem very abstract. For someone who has seen those languages, they're concrete and visceral.
Looking back twenty years ago, I now understand that one of the highest-value courses in my CS degree was the "Survey of Programming Languages" class. We spent two to three weeks studying and working with each of LISP, FORTRAN, ALGOL-60, Smalltalk, and a couple others I don't remember. I enjoyed the class but at the time I wasn't developed enough to think more than "man, people sure have come up with some strange ways of doing things; ok, back to C, I love my filesystems class."
Now I recognize how precious that exposure was. It's kind of like traveling; exposure to different cultures teaches you as much about your own culture as about theirs. You don't always realize what assumptions you're making until you see other people making different assumptions.
This is the value of formal CS education, i.e. Dijkstra's life work. Some people ask whether a CS degree is worthwhile when the Internet makes it so easy to learn how to program. It's the difference between university and vocational training; if you only want fix cars, you just need some skills classes and time spent apprenticing in a mechanic's shop. If you want to be an automotive engineer, you need an engineering education. If you just want a job, you don't need college; if you want to participate in the core of what our civilization has to offer, you need an education (self-study or formal, doesn't matter).
(Tip for the kids in school today: If you're at university and you find yourself frequently saying "Why do I have to learn this crap? I'll never use it!" then you might just be wasting your time and money. Do yourself a favor and drop out, unless someone else is paying for your play time. But if you learn for the sake of learning, if you recognize that learning how to learn, to prepare for a lifetime of learning, is the point of education, then stay in school, since you'll reap the rewards many times over.)